Kentucky Attorney General Files Transvaginal Mesh Lawsuit

September 26, 2016

Kentucky has followed the lead of other states and vaginal mesh attorneys, like Waters Kraus & Paul. The state has filed suit against Johnson & Johnson and Ethicon, the company’s medical device unit. The lawsuit alleges that the mesh medical device maker engaged in deceptive advertising to promote sales of its transvaginal mesh implants. They were marketed as a way to help women suffering from pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence. In actuality, the mesh medical devices often lead to medical conditions much worse than those they were supposed to treat. Problems include debilitating chronic pain, infections, bleeding, and painful intercourse for women and their partners.

Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear claims that Johnson & Johnson hid the risks of its mesh medical devices from doctors and patients alike. The Kentucky lawsuit asks for thousands of dollars in damages for each woman in the state who underwent surgery for implantation of the company’s vaginal mesh products. Kentucky is pursuing civil penalties of $2,000 for each violation of the state’s deceptive marketing statute and $10,000 for instances of deceptive advertising aimed at women more than 60 years old.

According to Beshear, the Kentucky suit involves claims related to more than 15,000 women who did not receive adequate warnings about the hazards of vaginal mesh. Many of those women reportedly have experienced complications that have left them permanently disabled and unable to hold down a job.

The scale of the problem is enormous. Pelvic organ prolapse, which is caused by childbirth and menopause, is extremely common. Vaginal mesh attorneys in the United States have filed tens of thousands of lawsuits on behalf of women injured by the mesh medical devices. Transvaginal mesh implants, or “slings,” have come under increased scrutiny from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has recently required that the medical devices be labeled as high risk.

“These are gut-wrenching cases,” says Waters Kraus & Paul founder Peter Kraus. “The women we represent are no different than our wives or our mothers and the injuries are horrific.”

Many women are embarrassed to talk about their injuries with their family or friends. They research their symptoms on the Internet and discover that other women, too, are experiencing pain in the vagina that cuts like a knife. They discover that other women are also suffering from constant urinary tract infections. Sometimes the infections are so bad that women have to be hospitalized. Although an antibiotic such as Bactrim can help, our clients tell us that the side effects — nausea, vomiting, dizziness and sleep issues — can be quite unpleasant.

The pelvic pain can be horrendous. The simple act of walking can be so painful that many women find it difficult to work an eight-hour shift, or even to take care of simple household tasks, like washing the dishes.

For many women, the damage to their marital relationship is one of the most troubling injuries caused by transvaginal mesh. Sexual intercourse can be excruciatingly painful for women and their husbands. Tragically, they feel “less of a woman” than before the surgery.

These are things women deserved to learn about before making a decision about transvaginal mesh surgery — not afterward.

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